In my talk I will describe how granular entropies of much larger systems can now be computed, using a novel algorithm. Interestingly, it turns out the definitio

In
an attempt to construct a Statical Mechanics of Powders, Sam Edwards
introduced the concept of `granular entropy', defined as the logarithm
of the number of distinct packings of N granular particles in a fixed
volume V.

In 1989, the proposal was rather
controversial but much of the debate was sterile because the granular entropy
could not even be computed for systems as small as 20 particles - hardly
a good approximation of the thermodynamic limit.

In my talk I will describe how granular
entropies of much larger systems can now be computed, using a novel algorithm. Interestingly,
it turns out the definition of granular entropy will have to be modified
to guarantee that granular entropy is extensive.

Which brings us back to the Gibbs paradox and a
dirty secret of colloid science.